Regional definitions vary from source to source. The counties shown in dark red are usually included, while all or portions of the striped counties may or may not be considered part of Southeast Texas.

Culturally, Southeast Texas is more closely akin to the Gulf Coast, Louisiana, or even Mississippi, than it is to West Texas. Much of modern Southeast Texas culture has its roots in traditions that go back for generations. Southeast Texas is consistent with much of the rest of rural Texas in that it is a part of the Bible Belt, an area in which many inhabitants have strongly Fundamentalist Christian beliefs[1]. Many of the largest cities in East Texas outside Houston still follow a rural Southern way of life, especially in dialect, mannerisms, religion, and cuisine.

Near the coast, the land is low and extremely flat, and often marshy, the Piney Woods extend into the Northern parts of Southeast Texas, reaching as far south as the rice paddies and marshlands that lie between Houston and Beaumont. The highest point on the coast is at High Island, where a salt dome raises the elevation to around 40feet (12m).

Away from the coast, the terrain begins to exhibit the rolling hills of East and Central Texas. Toward Central Texas, the mixed pine and hardwood forests give way to the East Central Texas forests of post oak and grasslands.

The Golden Triangle is an area of extreme Southeast Texas near the Louisiana border,[2] the "triangle" is formed by Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, which are the largest cities in the area. "Golden" refers to the wealth that came from the Spindle-top oil strike near Beaumont in 1901. In an attempt to distance the area from the petrochemical industry, some area interests attempted to rename the Golden Triangle as the "Triplex." This name change did not catch on, and local residents still refer to it as the Golden Triangle. Some residents of the Golden Triangle do not consider the Greater Houston area to be part of Southeast Texas and place the western boundary of the region approximately at the Trinity River, which is roughly 30 miles from downtown Houston.

The Big Thicket is an area of dense forest located in the area just north and northwest of the city of Beaumont. There are many small towns in this area, including Woodville and Kountze.

The Big Thicket National Preserve protects part of the old thicket, highlighting the area's biological resources, the 97,000 acre (390 km²) preserve boasts a varied ecology of piney woods, swamps, and coastal prairies. It includes extremely diverse range of plant species including orchids, cactus, cypress, and pine in close proximity to each other. Approximately 65,000 people visit this area each year.

Two historically important routes cross the Big Thicket: to the north lies the old cattle route or Beef Trail, that ran from Tyler County to Louisiana; to the south is the Spanish Trail or the Atascosito Road, that parallels modern Highway90 and Interstate10 from Liberty to Orange.

Galveston Bay is a large estuary located along Texas upper coast, the bay is fed by the Trinity River and the San Jacinto River, numerous local bayous, and incoming tides from the Gulf of Mexico. The bay covers approximately 600 square miles (1,500 km²), and is 30 miles (50 km) long and 17 miles (27 km) wide. Galveston Bay is on average 7–9feet (2-3m) deep. The bay has three inlets to the Gulf of Mexico: Bolivar Roads (the exit of the Houston Ship Channel) between Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula, San Luis Pass to the west, and Rollover Pass to the east.

The Houston Ship Channel, connecting the Port of Houston to the Gulf, passes through Galveston Bay. Houston is the largest city on the bay, while smaller ones include Galveston, Pasadena, Bay Town, and Texas City, the bay provides nursery and spawning grounds for large amounts of marine life and is important for both commercial and recreational fishing.

Compared to the rest of the state, Southeast Texas' climate is warmer in winter and cooler in summer, on average, the region receives more rain than other parts of the state. This can increase the humidity level in the region, the relatively mild and wet climate is largely due to the influence of the Gulf of Mexico. Average annual rainfall in the Golden Triangle is 60 inches (1,500 mm). Rainfall totals in other parts of Southeast Texas are lower, but still in excess of 40inches (1,000 mm) per year. During Tropical Storm Claudette in 1979, the city of Alvin recorded an official 24-hour rainfall total of 42 inches (1,067 mm) — the highest one-day rainfall total ever measured in the United States.

Houston has been called the Lightning Capital of Texas, as its density of lightning strikes is higher than it is in other parts of the state, this area of unusually high lightning activity stretches from Houston eastward into Southwest Louisiana. Much of this can be explained by the natural occurrence of thunderstorms in the region, which form almost daily during the summer months. However, the unusual clustering of lightning around the developed areas of Houston, the Golden Triangle, and Lake Charles, Louisiana have led many researchers to believe that some combination of urban heat islands and air pollution are responsible for increasing the number of lightning strikes beyond even the already-high natural levels.

1.
East Texas
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East Texas is a distinct cultural, geographic and ecological area in the U. S. state of Texas. The East Texas Regions includes Tyler, Longview, Marshall, Palestine, Jacksonville, Mount Pleasant, most of the region consists of the Piney Woods ecoregion, and East Texas can sometimes be reduced to include only the Piney Woods. Houston is rarely regarded as a part of East Texas and is closely associated with the Coastal Bend along the Gulf of Mexico. At the fringes, towards Central Texas, the forests expand outward toward sparser trees, outside of the Greater Houston area the average population density is around 18–45 per square mile, with the population density near the Big Thicket dropping below 18 people per sq mi. East Texass population is large and is centered around the Golden Triangle which is Beaumont/Port Arthur/Orange in Southeast Texas. Moving north from the coast, Lufkin and Nacogdoches anchor the center of Deep East Texas. Only eight miles from the Texas border, Shreveport, Louisiana, is considered the economic and cultural center for the Ark-La-Tex, the area where Arkansas, Louisiana, East Texas receives more rainfall,35 to 60 inches, than the rest of Texas. All of East Texas also lies within the Gulf Coastal Plain, local vegetation also varies from north to south with the lower third consisting of the temperate grassland extending from South Texas to South Louisiana. The upper two-thirds of the region dominated by temperate forest known as the Piney Woods, the Piney Woods are part of a much larger region of pine-hardwood forest that extends into Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The Piney Woods thins out as it nears the Gulf of Mexico, west of the Piney Woods are the ranchlands and remnant oak forests of the East Central Texas forests ecoregion. The Sabine River, Trinity River, Neches River, Angelina River and Sulphur River are the rivers in East Texas. The Brazos cuts through the southwest portion of the region while the Red River forms its border with Oklahoma. In East Texas and the rest of the South, small rivers and creeks collect into swamps called Bayous, bald cypress and Spanish moss are the dominant plants in bayous. The most famous of these bayous are Cypress Bayou and Buffalo Bayou, Cypress Bayou surrounds the Big, Little, and Black Cypress rivers around Jefferson. They flow east into Caddo Lake and the adjoining wetlands cover the rim, East Texas is often considered the westernmost extension of the Deep South. The predominant cultural influence comes from customs and traditions passed down from European-American and African-American Southerners who settled the region during the mid, african Americans were first brought to the area as enslaved workers for the plantations. These influences are noticeable in the sub-dialect of Texan English that is throughout the region. East Texas did not have the influence of late 19th and early 20th century European immigrants from Germany and Central Europe

2.
U.S. state
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A U. S. state is a constituent political entity of the United States of America. There are 50 states, which are together in a union with each other. Each state holds administrative jurisdiction over a geographic territory. Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders. States range in population from just under 600,000 to over 39 million, four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names. States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state, State governments are allocated power by the people through their individual constitutions. All are grounded in principles, and each provides for a government. States possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution, Constitution has been amended, and the interpretation and application of its provisions have changed. The general tendency has been toward centralization and incorporation, with the government playing a much larger role than it once did. There is a debate over states rights, which concerns the extent and nature of the states powers and sovereignty in relation to the federal government. States and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a legislature consisting of the Senate. Each state is represented in the Senate by two senators, and is guaranteed at least one Representative in the House, members of the House are elected from single-member districts. Representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census, the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50, alaska and Hawaii are the most recent states admitted, both in 1959. The Constitution is silent on the question of states have the power to secede from the Union. Shortly after the Civil War, the U. S. Supreme Court, in Texas v. White, as a result, while the governments of the various states share many similar features, they often vary greatly with regard to form and substance

3.
Texas
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Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Other major cities include Austin, the second most populous state capital in the U. S. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify its former status as an independent republic, and as a reminder of the states struggle for independence from Mexico. The Lone Star can be found on the Texan state flag, the origin of Texass name is from the word Tejas, which means friends in the Caddo language. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10 percent of Texas land area is desert. Most of the centers are located in areas of former prairies, grasslands, forests. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the term six flags over Texas refers to several nations that have ruled over the territory. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas, Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the United States as the 28th state, the states annexation set off a chain of events that caused the Mexican–American War in 1846. A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, after the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. One Texan industry that thrived after the Civil War was cattle, due to its long history as a center of the industry, Texas is associated with the image of the cowboy. The states economic fortunes changed in the early 20th century, when oil discoveries initiated a boom in the state. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy, as of 2010 it shares the top of the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with California at 57. With a growing base of industry, the leads in many industries, including agriculture, petrochemicals, energy, computers and electronics, aerospace. Texas has led the nation in export revenue since 2002 and has the second-highest gross state product. The name Texas, based on the Caddo word tejas meaning friends or allies, was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves, during Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas, La Provincia de Texas. Texas is the second largest U. S. state, behind Alaska, though 10 percent larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Chile, Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers, the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south

4.
Greater Houston
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Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land is a nine-county metropolitan area defined by the Office of Management and Budget. It is located along the Gulf Coast region in the U. S. state of Texas, the metropolitan area is colloquially referred to as Greater Houston and is situated in Southeast Texas. The population of the area is centered in the city of Houston—the largest economic. Houston is among the metropolitan areas in the United States. From 2000 to 2007, the area grew by 912,994 people, from 2000 to 2030, the metropolitan area is projected by Woods & Poole Economics to rank fifth in the nation in population growth—adding 2.66 million people. It is a part of the Texas Triangle megapolitan area, the OMB lumps the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugarland MSA with four micropolitan statistical areas to form the Houston-The Woodlands, TX Combined Statistical Area. Bay City, Brenham, El Campo, and Huntsville, the metropolitan area is located in the Gulf Coastal Plains biome, and its vegetation is classified as temperate grassland. Much of the area was built on forested land, marshes, swamp. The Houston area land mass is very diverse, there is forested land and hills to the north, beaches and grasslands to the south, swamps and marshlands to the east, rice fields and praires to the west. Much of the Houston metropolitan area is flat, making flooding a recurring problem for some areas. Underpinning Houstons land surface are unconsolidated clays, clay shales, the regions geology developed from stream deposits formed from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains. These sediments consist of a series of sands and clays deposited on decaying organic matter that, over time, transformed into oil, beneath these tiers is a water-deposited layer of halite, a rock salt. The porous layers were compressed over time and forced upward, as it pushed upward, the salt dragged surrounding sediments into dome shapes, often trapping oil and gas that seeped from the surrounding porous sands. This thick, rich soil provides a good environment for rice farming in suburban outskirts into which the city continues to grow near Katy. Evidence of past rice farming is still evident in developed areas as an abundance of rich, dark. The Houston region is generally earthquake-free and these faults generally move at a smooth rate in what is termed fault creep. As defined by the Office of Management and Budget, the area of Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land encompasses nine counties in Texas. They are listed below with figures as of the 2010 U. S. Census

5.
Gulf Coast of the United States
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The Gulf Coast of the United States is the coastline along which the Southern United States meets the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, the economy of the Gulf Coast area is dominated by industries related to energy, petrochemicals, fishing, aerospace, agriculture, and tourism. The Gulf Coast is made of many inlets, bays, the coast is also intersected by numerous rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River. Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was and these landforms protect numerous bays and inlets providing as a barrier to oncoming waves. The central part of the Gulf Coast, from eastern Texas through Louisiana, the eastern part of the Gulf Coast, predominantly Florida, is dotted with many bays and inlets. The Gulf Coast climate is humid subtropical for the most part, although the tip of Florida. Much of the year is warm to hot along the Gulf Coast, while the 3 winters months bring periods of cool, the area is vulnerable to hurricanes as well as floods and severe thunderstorms. Tornadoes are infrequent at the coast but do occur, however the frequency at which they occur in inland portions of Gulf Coast states is much greater. Earthquakes are extremely rare to the area, but a surprising 6.0 earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico on September 10,2006, the Gulf Coast is a major center of economic activity. The marshlands along the Louisiana and Texas coasts provide breeding grounds, the Port of South Louisiana and the Port of Houston are two of the ten busiest ports in the world by cargo volume. As of 2004, seven of the top ten busiest ports in the U. S. are on the Gulf Coast. The discovery of oil and gas deposits along the coast and offshore, the coast contains nearly 4,000 oil platforms. S. Before Europeans arrived in the region, the region was home to several kingdoms that had extensive trade networks with empires such as the Aztecs. Shark and alligator teeth and shells from the Gulf have been found as far north as Ohio, the first Europeans to settle the Gulf Coast were primarily the French and the Spanish. The Louisiana Purchase and the Texas Revolution made the Gulf Coast a part of the United States during the first half of the 19th century. As the U. S. population continued to expand its frontiers westward, the development of sugar and cotton production allowed the South to prosper. Two major events were turning points in the history of the Gulf Coast region. The first was the American Civil War, which caused damage to some economic sectors in the South

6.
Louisiana
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Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Louisiana is the 31st most extensive and the 25th most populous of the 50 United States and its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the state in the U. S. with political subdivisions termed parishes. The largest parish by population is East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana is bordered by Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, Texas to the west, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Much of the lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh. These contain a rich southern biota, typical examples include birds such as ibis, there are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated areas, fire is a process in the landscape. These support a large number of plant species, including many species of orchids. Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized. Before the American purchase of the territory in 1803, the current Louisiana State had been both a French colony and for a period, a Spanish one. In addition, colonists imported numerous African people as slaves in the 18th century, many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture. Louisiana was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715, when René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane. The suffix -ana is a Latin suffix that can refer to information relating to an individual, subject. Thus, roughly, Louis + ana carries the idea of related to Louis, the Gulf of Mexico did not exist 250 million years ago when there was but one supercontinent, Pangea. As Pangea split apart, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico opened, Louisiana slowly developed, over millions of years, from water into land, and from north to south. The oldest rocks are exposed in the north, in such as the Kisatchie National Forest. The oldest rocks date back to the early Tertiary Era, some 60 million years ago, the history of the formation of these rocks can be found in D. Spearings Roadside Geology of Louisiana. The sediments were carried north to south by the Mississippi River

7.
Mississippi
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Mississippi /ˌmɪsᵻˈsɪpi/ is a state in the southern region of the United States, with part of its southern border formed by the Gulf of Mexico. Its western border is formed by the Mississippi River, the state has a population of approximately 3 million. It is the 32nd most extensive and the 32nd most populous of the 50 United States, located in the center of the state, Jackson is the state capital and largest city, with a population of approximately 175,000 people. The state is heavily forested outside of the Mississippi Delta area, before the American Civil War, most development in the state was along riverfronts, where slaves worked on cotton plantations. After the war, the bottomlands to the interior were cleared, by the end of the 19th century, African Americans made up two-thirds of the Deltas property owners, but timber and railroad companies acquired much of the land after a financial crisis. Clearing altered the Deltas ecology, increasing the severity of flooding along the Mississippi, much land is now held by agribusinesses. The states catfish aquaculture farms produce the majority of farm-raised catfish consumed in the United States, since the 1930s and the Great Migration, Mississippi has been majority white, albeit with the highest percentage of black residents of any U. S. state. From the early 19th century to the 1930s, its residents were mostly black, whites retained political power through Jim Crow laws. In 2010, 37% of Mississippians were African Americans, the highest percentage of African Americans in any U. S. state, since gaining enforcement of their voting franchise in the late 1960s, most African Americans support Democratic candidates in local, state and national elections. Conservative whites have shifted to the Republican Party, African Americans are a majority in many counties of the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta, an area of historic settlement during the plantation era. Since 2011 Mississippi has been ranked as the most religious state in the country, the states name is derived from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary. Settlers named it after the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi, in addition to its namesake, major rivers in Mississippi include the Big Black River, the Pearl River, the Yazoo River, the Pascagoula River, and the Tombigbee River. Major lakes include Ross Barnett Reservoir, Arkabutla Lake, Sardis Lake, Mississippi is entirely composed of lowlands, the highest point being Woodall Mountain, in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains,807 feet above sea level. The lowest point is sea level at the Gulf coast, the states mean elevation is 300 feet above sea level. Most of Mississippi is part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain, the coastal plain is generally composed of low hills, such as the Pine Hills in the south and the North Central Hills. The Pontotoc Ridge and the Fall Line Hills in the northeast have somewhat higher elevations, yellow-brown loess soil is found in the western parts of the state. The northeast is a region of black earth that extends into the Alabama Black Belt. The coastline includes large bays at Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, the northwest remainder of the state consists of the Mississippi Delta, a section of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain

8.
West Texas
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West Texas is a loosely defined part of the U. S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the arid and semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Fort Worth and Del Rio. There is no consensus on the boundary between eastern and western Texas, West Texas is often subdivided according to distinct physiographic features. The portion of West Texas that lies west of the Pecos River is often referred to as Far West Texas or the Trans-Pecos, the Trans-Pecos lies within the Chihuahuan Desert, the most arid portion of the state. Another part of West Texas is the Llano Estacado, a vast region of high, level plains extending into Eastern New Mexico, to the east of the Llano Estacado lies the “redbed country” of the Rolling Plains and to the south of the Llano Estacado lies the Edwards Plateau. The Rolling Plains and the Edwards Plateau subregions act as transitional zones between eastern and western Texas, the counties included in the West Texas region vary depending on the organization. West Texas has a lower population density than the rest of the state. It was once inhabited by nomadic Native American tribes, such as the Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa. This period was marked with savage war waged between the US Army, frontier Texans, and the Texas Rangers on one side and native peoples on the other. During the later 19th century, the population of Americans. This period was marked by the mapping and geographical intelligence collection of a denied area held by hostile Indian tribes. In turn, the Comanche way of war reached its zenith, having either subjugated or defeated the other Indian clans. In contrast, the support by the US government of Americans settlement. By the end of the 19th century, West Texas had been pacified of hostile Indians, leaving its turbulent history to what remained of outlaw Texans and people such as Judge Roy Bean. With the defeat of the Comanche and their allies and their removal upon demand by Texas from the state, the area was settled by Texans. These decades marked the last great cattle drives, the zenith of American cowboys, small farmers and ranchers battling sheepherders. This continuing socioeconomic trends resulted in the region having a mix of Mexican American and American communities of the modern day. As a result of historical development, many Mexican Americans still have close family ties in Mexico. Of American settlers, during the migration era, the vast majority were either East Texans or other Southerners going west for new opportunities

9.
Bible Belt
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The Bible Belt consists of much of the Southern United States as well as parts of adjacent areas. During the colonial period, the South was a stronghold of the Anglican church, whereas the state with the highest percentage of residents identifying as non-religious is the New England state of Vermont at 34%, in the Bible Belt state of Alabama it is just 3%. Mississippi has the highest proportion of Baptists, at 75%, mencken claimed the term as his invention in 1927. The name Bible Belt has been applied historically to the South and parts of the Midwest, in addition, the Bible Belt covers most of Missouri and Kentucky and southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. A1978 study by Charles Heatwole identified the Bible Belt as the region dominated by 24 fundamentalist Protestant denominations, according to Stephen W. is research also broke the Bible Belt into two core regions, a western region and an eastern region. Tweedies western Bible Belt was focused on a core that extended from Little Rock, Arkansas to Tulsa and his eastern Bible Belt was focused on a core that included the major population centers of Virginia and North Carolina. A study was commissioned by the American Bible Society to survey the importance of the Bible in the areas of the United States. The report was based on 42,855 interviews conducted between 2005 and 2012, in addition to the South, there is a smaller Bible Belt in West Michigan, centered around the heavily Dutch-influenced cities of Holland and Grand Rapids. Christian colleges in that region include Calvin College, Hope College, Cornerstone University, Grace Bible College, West Michigan is generally fiscally and socially conservative. There has been research that links evangelical Protestantism with social conservatism, in 1950, President Harry S. Truman told Catholic leaders he wanted to send an ambassador to the Vatican. Truman said the leading Democrats in Congress approved, but they warned him, it would defeat Democratic Senators and Congressmen in the Bible Belt. Other Bible Belt states have voted for the Republican presidential candidate in the majority of elections since 1980, mainly members of Conservative Laestadianism in Northern and Central parts of Finland The Bible Belt of Norway is located mainly in Western Norway. The Bible Belt of the Netherlands stretches from Zeeland, through the West-Betuwe and Veluwe, in New Zealand, Mount Roskill, Auckland, contains the highest number of churches per capita in the country, and is the home of several Christian political candidates. The electorate was one of the last in the country to go wet, in 1999, in the Eastern and Northern parts of Slovakia, Christians comprise a majority, in some towns and villages almost 100%. Before its independence, Soviet Ukraine was known as the Bible Belt of the Soviet Union, in Northern Ireland, the area in County Antrim stretching from roughly Portrush to Larne and centred in the area of Ballymena is often referred to as a Bible Belt. This is because the area is heavily Protestant with a large evangelical community, from 1970 to 2010, the MP for North Antrim was Ian Paisley, a Free Presbyterian minister well known for his theological fundamentalism. The town of Ballymena, the largest town in the constituency, is referred to as the buckle of the Bible Belt. In the Republic of Ireland, County Wicklow and western parts of County Cork have the highest population of Protestants, balmer, Randall H. Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism

10.
Christian fundamentalism
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Christian fundamentalism began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and American Protestants as a reaction to theological liberalism and cultural modernism. Fundamentalists are almost always described as having an interpretation of the Bible. A few scholars regard Catholics who reject modern theology in favor of traditional doctrines as fundamentalists. Scholars debate how much the terms evangelical and fundamentalist are synonymous, interpretations of Christian fundamentalism have changed over time. Fundamentalism is a movement manifested in various such as Pentecostalism or Roman Catholicism with various theologies. The movement became more organized in the 1920s within U. S. Protestant churches, especially Baptist, many such churches adopted a fighting style and combined Princeton theology with Dispensationalism. The term fundamentalism was coined by Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws in 1920 to designate Christians who were ready to do battle royal for the fundamentals, the term was quickly adopted by all sides. Laws borrowed it from the title of a series of essays published between 1910 and 1915 called The Fundamentals, A Testimony to the Truth, the term fundamentalism entered the English language in 1922, and is often capitalized when referring to the religious movement. The term fundamentalist is controversial in the 21st century, as it can carry the connotation of religious extremism, some who hold these beliefs reject the label of fundamentalism, seeing it as too pejorative, while to others it has become a banner of pride. Such Christians prefer to use the fundamental, as opposed to fundamentalist. The term is confused with Christian legalism. Fundamentalism came from streams in British and American theology of the 19th century. Modernists attempted to update Christianity to match their view of science and they denied biblical miracles and argued that God manifests himself through the social evolution of society. These latent tensions erupted to the surface after World War I in what came to be called the fundamentalist/modernist split, however, the split does not mean there are just two groups, modernists and fundamentalists. There are also people who considered themselves to be neo-evangelicals, separating themselves from the components of fundamentalism. These neo-evangelicals also wanted to separate themselves from the fundamentalist movement and they in turn had been influenced by the Pietism movement in Germany. A second stream was Dispensationalism, a new interpretation of the Bible developed in the 1830s in England, John Nelson Darbys ideas were disseminated by the notes and commentaries in the widely used Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1909. Dispensationalism was a theory that divided all of time into seven different stages, called dispensations

11.
Southern United States
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The Southern United States, commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South, is a region of the United States of America. The South does not fully match the geographic south of the United States, arizona and New Mexico, which are geographically in the southern part of the country, are rarely considered part, while West Virginia, which separated from Virginia in 1863, commonly is. Some scholars have proposed definitions of the South that do not coincide neatly with state boundaries, while the states of Delaware and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia permitted slavery prior to the start of the Civil War, they remained with the Union. However, the United States Census Bureau puts them in the South, usually, the South is defined as including the southeastern and south-central United States. The region is known for its culture and history, having developed its own customs, musical styles, and cuisines, the Southern ethnic heritage is diverse and includes strong European, African, and some Native American components. Since the late 1960s, black people have many offices in Southern states, especially in the coastal states of Virginia. Historically, the South relied heavily on agriculture, and was rural until after 1945. It has since become more industrialized and urban and has attracted national and international migrants, the American South is now among the fastest-growing areas in the United States. Houston is the largest city in the Southern United States, sociological research indicates that Southern collective identity stems from political, demographic, and cultural distinctiveness from the rest of the United States. The region contains almost all of the Bible Belt, an area of high Protestant church attendance and predominantly conservative, indeed, studies have shown that Southerners are more conservative than non-Southerners in several areas, including religion, morality, international relations and race relations. Apart from its climate, the experience in the South increasingly resembles the rest of the nation. The arrival of millions of Northerners and millions of Hispanics meant the introduction of cultural values, the process has worked both ways, however, with aspects of Southern culture spreading throughout a greater portion of the rest of the United States in a process termed Southernization. The question of how to define the subregions in the South has been the focus of research for nearly a century, as defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Southern region of the United States includes sixteen states. As of 2010, an estimated 114,555,744 people, or thirty-seven percent of all U. S. residents, lived in the South, the nations most populous region. Other terms related to the South include, The Old South, the New South, usually including the South Atlantic States. The Solid South, region largely controlled by the Democratic Party from 1877 to 1964, before that, blacks were elected to national office and many to local office through the 1880s, Populist-Republican coalitions gained victories for Fusionist candidates for governors in the 1890s. Includes at least all the 11 former Confederate States, Southeastern United States, usually including the Carolinas, the Virginias, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. The Deep South, various definitions, usually including Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, occasionally, parts of adjoining states are included

12.
Cuisine of the Southern United States
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The most notable influences come from African, English, Scottish, Irish, French, and Native American cuisines. Tidewater, Appalachian, Creole, Lowcountry, and Floribbean are examples of types of Southern cuisine, in recent history, elements of Southern cuisine have spread north, having an effect on the development of other types of American cuisine. Many elements of Southern cooking—squash, tomatoes, corn, and deep-pit barbecuing—are borrowings from southeast American Indian tribes such as the Caddo, Choctaw, and Seminole. Sugar, flour, milk, and eggs come from Europe, the Southern fondness for fried foods is Scottish, and the old-fashioned Virginian use of ragouts comes from the West Country of England. The Souths fondness for a full breakfast derives from the British full breakfast or fry-up, variously known as the full English breakfast, full Scottish, full Irish, full Welsh, parts of the South have other cuisines, though. A traditional Southern meal is pan-fried chicken, field peas, greens, mashed potatoes, cornbread or corn pone, sweet tea, fried chicken is among the regions best-known exports. It is believed that the Scots, and later Scottish immigrants to many states had a tradition of deep frying chicken in fat. Pork is an part of the cuisine. Stuffed ham is served in Southern Maryland, a traditional holiday get-together featuring whole hog barbecue is known in Virginia and the Carolinas as a pig pickin. Southern meals, especially among the poor of both races, sometimes consist only of vegetables, with a little used in cooking. Beans and greens—white or brown beans served alongside a mess of greens stewed with a little bacon—is a traditional meal in many parts of the South, other low-meat Southern meals include beans and cornbread—the beans being pinto beans stewed with ham or bacon—and Hoppin John. Coleslaw is also popular, both as a dish and on a variety of barbecued and fried meats. Apart from it, though, Southern cooking makes use of cabbage. Chains serving Southern foods—often along with American comfort food—have had great success, many have spread across the country, family-style restaurants serving Southern cuisine are common throughout the South, and range from the humble and down-home to the decidedly upscale. Southern cuisine varies widely by region, In Southern Louisiana, there is Creole cuisine, Louisiana is the largest supplier of crawfish in the U. S. In the coastal areas of South Carolina, rice was an important crop, leading to local specialties like Hoppin John, Arkansas produces Riceland rice and sweet corn, both of which are staples of the cuisine of Southeastern Arkansas. Mississippi and Alabama produce the most catfish in the United States, Oklahoma has a reputation for many grain- and bean-based dishes, such as cornbread and beans or the breakfast dish biscuits and gravy. Mississippi specializes in farm-raised catfish, found in traditional fish houses throughout the state, Arkansas is the top rice-producing state in the nation, and is also noted for catfish, pork barbecue at restaurants, and chicken

13.
Hispanic
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The term Hispanic broadly refers to the people, nations, and cultures that have a historical link to Spain. It commonly applies to countries once colonized by the Spanish Empire in the Americas and Asia, particularly the countries of Latin America and the Philippines. It could be argued that the term should apply to all Spanish-speaking cultures or countries and it is difficult to label a nation or culture with one term, such as Hispanic, as the ethnicities, customs, traditions, and art forms vary greatly by country and region. The Spanish language and Spanish culture are the main traditions, the term Hispanic derives from Latin Hispanicus, the adjectival derivation of Latin Hispania and Hispanus/Hispanos, ultimately probably of Celtiberian origin. In English the word is attested from the 16th century, the words Spain, Spanish, and Spaniard are of the same etymology as Hispanus, ultimately. Hispanus was the Latin name given to a person from Hispania during Roman rule, in English, the term Hispano-Roman is sometimes used. The Hispano-Romans were composed of people from different indigenous tribes. A number of men, such as Trajan, Hadrian. Hispano-Roman is used to refer to the culture and people of Hispania, Hispanic is used to refer to modern Spain, to the Spanish language, and to the Spanish-speaking nations of the world and particularly the Americas. Spanish is used to refer to the people, nationality, culture, language, Spaniard is used to refer to the people of Spain. Hispania was the Roman name for the territory of the Iberian Peninsula. Initially, this territory was divided into two provinces, Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior, in 27 B. C, Hispania Ulterior was divided into two new provinces, Hispania Baetica and Hispania Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was renamed Hispania Tarraconensis. This division of Hispania explains the usage of the singular and plural forms used to refer to the peninsula and this revival of the old Roman concept in the Middle Ages appears to have originated in Provençal, and was first documented at the end of the 11th century. In the Council of Constance, the four kingdoms shared one vote, the word Lusitanian, relates to Lusitania or Portugal, also in reference to the Lusitanians, possibly one of the first Indo-European tribes to settle in Europe. From this tribes name had derived the name of the Roman province of Lusitania, the terms Spain and the Spains were not interchangeable. Spain was a territory, home to several kingdoms, with separate governments, laws, languages, religions, and customs. Spain was not an entity until much later, and when referring to the Middle Ages. The term The Spains referred specifically to a collective of juridico-political units, first the Christian kingdoms, although colloquially and literally the expression King of Spain or King of the Spains was already widespread, it did not refer to a unified nation-state

14.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor

15.
Racial integration
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Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation. Desegregation is largely a matter, integration largely a social one. The movement toward desegregation, breaking down the nations Jim Crow system, integration, on the other hand, Professor Oscar Handlin maintains, implies several things not yet necessarily accepted in all areas of American society. In one sense it refers to the levelling of all barriers to other than those based on ability, taste. But in another sense integration calls for the distribution of a minority throughout society. Here, according to Handlin, the emphasis is on balance in areas of occupation, education, residency. From the beginning the military establishment rightly understood that the breakup of the unit would in a closed society necessarily mean more than mere desegregation. It constantly used the terms integration and equal treatment and opportunity to describe its racial goals, rarely, if ever, does one find the word desegregation in military files that include much correspondence. Integration happens even without a mandate from the law, desegregation, on the other hand, was the legal remedy to segregation. Making almost the point, Henry Organ, identifying himself as a participant in the Civil Rights Movement on the Peninsula in the 60s. The term integration, on the hand, pertains to a social domain, it does. In their book By the Color of Our Skin Leonard Steinhorn, give white Americans the sensation of having meaningful, repeated contact with blacks without actually having it. Reviewing this book in the libertarian magazine Reason, Michael W. Lynch sums up some of their conclusions as, Blacks and whites live, learn, work, pray, play, and entertain separately. If a significant number of black children arent comfortable with them, it isnt by choice and its one thing for members of the black elite and upper middle class to choose to retire to predominantly black neighborhoods after a lucrative days work in white America. Its quite another for people to be unable to enter that commercial sphere because they spent their formative years in a community that didnt, or couldnt, prepare them for it. Writes Patterson, The greatest problem now facing African-Americans is their isolation from the norms of the dominant culture. Although widespread, this distinction between integration and desegregation is not universally accepted, for example, it is possible to find references to court-ordered integration from sources such as the Detroit News, PBS, or even Encarta. These same sources use the phrase court-ordered desegregation, apparently with exactly the same meaning

16.
Gulf of Mexico
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The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. The U. S. states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas border the Gulf on the north, Atlantic and Pacific coasts, or sometimes the south coast, in juxtaposition to the Great Lakes region being the north coast. One of the seven main areas is the Gulf of Mexico basin. The Gulf of Mexico formed approximately 300 million years ago as a result of plate tectonics, the Gulfs basin is roughly oval and is approximately 810 nautical miles wide and floored by sedimentary rocks and recent sediments. It is connected to part of the Atlantic Ocean through the Florida Straits between the U. S. and Cuba, and with the Caribbean Sea via the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba, with the narrow connection to the Atlantic, the Gulf experiences very small tidal ranges. The size of the Gulf basin is approximately 1.6 million km2, almost half of the basin is shallow continental shelf waters. The basin contains a volume of roughly 2,500 quadrillion liters, the consensus among geologists who have studied the geology of the Gulf of Mexico, is that prior to the Late Triassic, the Gulf of Mexico did not exist. It was created by the collision of plates that formed Pangea. As interpreted by Roy Van Arsdale and Randel T. Cox, geologists and other Earth scientists agree in general that the present Gulf of Mexico basin originated in Late Triassic time as the result of rifting within Pangea. The rifting was associated with zones of weakness within Pangea, including sutures where the Laurentia, South American, first, there was a Late Triassic-Early Jurassic phase of rifting during which rift valleys formed and filled with continental red beds. Second, as rifting progressed through Early and Middle Jurassic time and it was at this time that tectonics first created a connection to the Pacific Ocean across central Mexico and later eastward to the Atlantic Ocean. This flooded the basin created by rifting and crustal thinning to create the Gulf of Mexico. While the Gulf of Mexico was a basin, the subsiding transitional crust was blanketed by the widespread deposition of Louann Salt. Initially, during the Late Jurassic, continued rifting widened the Gulf of Mexico and progressed to the point that sea-floor spreading, at this point, sufficient circulation with the Atlantic Ocean was established that the deposition of Louann Salt ceased. During the Late Jurassic through Early Cretaceous, the occupied by the Gulf of Mexico experienced a period of cooling. The subsidence was the result of a combination of stretching, cooling. Initially, the combination of stretching and cooling caused about 5–7 km of tectonic subsidence of the central thin transitional

17.
Intracoastal Waterway
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Some sections of the waterway consist of natural inlets, saltwater rivers, bays, and sounds, while others are artificial canals. It provides a route along its length without many of the hazards of travel on the open sea. Since the coastline represented the border and commerce of the time was chiefly by water. The improvement of the natural transportation routes was a major concern for all geographic regions. These improvements were also a source of political division about where and how improvements should be developed, who should pay, in 1802, at the request of the Senate, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin presented an overall plan for future transportation developments of national importance and scope. Marys along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia and it is unnecessary to add any comments on the utility of the work, in peace or war, for the transportation of merchandise or the conveyance of persons. Since these 1824 acts, the United States Army Corps of Engineers has responsibility for navigation waterway improvements, over time, additional portions of other coastal improvements were authorized for development, including the Houston Ship Channel and the Delaware River in 1872. While some policy corrections were implemented over the ensuing 30 years, in the River and Harbors Appropriations Acts of 1882 and 1884, Congress signaled its intent to improve waterways to benefit the nation by promoting competition among transportation modes. In 1887, the Interstate Commerce Act established federal regulation of railroads, the invention of the diesel engine in 1892 eventually led to the conversion of fuels for transportation from coal and steam to diesel and the internal combustion engine. This was greatly enhanced by World War I military uses and the beginning of a new age of fuel usage, andrews Bay, Florida, as well as a study of the most efficient means to move cargo. Between 1910 and 1914, navigation channels were deepened, and the screw propeller proved efficient for improved steering and flanking qualities, in 1936 the continuous 9 ft ×100 ft channel was completed between the Apalachicola River and New Orleans. By 1942, the 9 ft ×100 ft ICW channel was completed between New Orleans and Corpus Christi, today, federal law provides for the waterway to be maintained at a minimum depth of 12 feet for most of its length, but inadequate funding has prevented that. Consequently, for ships, shoaling or shallow waters are encountered along several sections of the waterway. While no tolls are charged for usage, commercial users have been charged a fuel tax since 1978. That year, the Inland Waterways Revenue Act imposed a fuel tax, originally set at 4 cents per gallon in 1980. The Water Resources Development Act of 1986 was a bill regarding all water resources utilization nationally. These segments were intended to be connected via a dredged waterway from St, marks to Tarpon Springs and the Cross Florida Barge Canal across northern Florida, but these projects were never completed due to environmental concerns. Additional canals and bays extend a navigable waterway to Boston, Massachusetts, the Intracoastal Waterway has a good deal of commercial activity, barges haul petroleum, petroleum products, foodstuffs, building materials, and manufactured goods

18.
Neches River
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The Neches River begins in Van Zandt County east of Rhine Lake and flows for 416 miles through east Texas to its mouth on Sabine Lake near the Rainbow Bridge. Two major reservoirs, Lake Palestine and B. A. Steinhagen Reservoir are located on the Neches. Several cities are located along the Neches River Basin, including Tyler, Lufkin, Silsbee, Evadale, Beaumont, Vidor, Port Neches, Nederland, Groves, with the exception of the manmade lakes, much of the river is in a natural state. For example, from Lake B. A. Steinhagen down to Beaumont and this important ecosphere preserves the area where several ecosystems converge - an event that harkens back to the last glacial period. The Big Thicket Visitor Center is off U. S. Highway 69 several miles north of Kountze, the Lower Neches Valley Authority is the river authority which oversees the Neches River in Tyler, Hardin, Liberty, Chambers, and Jefferson counties of Texas. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service purchased land along the Neches River beginning in 2006 for the creation of the Neches River National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge includes land on which Dallas had proposed to build a reservoir to meet the needs of the city. Tentatively named Lake Fastrill, this reservoir was not scheduled to be built until 2050. However, in February 2010 the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the lower forty miles of the river, from the Beaumont Interstate 10 bridge to Sabine Lake, is industrialized. The river is a deep ship channel running between the Port of Beaumont to Sabine Lake. The channel is currently 40 feet deep and 400 ft wide, the total estimated cost of the Sabine-Neches Waterway project is $1.1 billion. Several petro-chemical plants are located in the rivers southern section. The Sabine-Neches Navigation District, formed in 1909, has management responsibilities of the portion of the river which is part of the Sabine-Neches Waterway, the Port of Beaumont is located on the Neches River at Beaumont, Texas. It begins near the mouth of the river and the Rainbow Bridge, list of Texas rivers USS Neches — a fleet oiler built in 1920. Sabine-Neches Waterway Lower Neches Valley Authority Neches River from the Handbook of Texas Online Fun365Days

19.
Trinity River (Texas)
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The Trinity River is a 710-mile-long river in Texas, and is the longest river with a watershed entirely within the U. S. state of Texas. It rises in extreme northern Texas, a few south of the Red River. The headwaters are separated by the bluffs on the southern side of the Red River. Robert Cavelier de La Salle, in 1687, called the stream the River of Canoes, the name Trinity came three years later in 1690 from Alonso de León, who called the stream the La Santísima Trinidad. The Trinity River has four branches, the West Fork, the Clear Fork, the Elm Fork, the West Fork Trinity River has its headwaters in Archer County. From there it flows southeast, through the man-made reservoirs Lake Bridgeport and Eagle Mountain Lake then flowing eastward through Lake Worth, the Elm Fork Trinity River flows south from near Gainesville through Ray Roberts Lake and east of the city of Denton eventually through Lewisville Lake. The West Fork and the Elm Fork merge as they enter the city of Dallas, the East Fork Trinity River begins near McKinney, Texas and flows through Lavon Lake then Lake Ray Hubbard before joining the Trinity River just southeast of Dallas. The Trinity then flows southeast from Dallas across a fertile floodplain, the Trinity crosses Texas State Highway 31 in Henderson County, near where the first county seat, Buffalo, was established. Roughly 65 miles north of the mouth, a dam was built in 1968 to form Lake Livingston. It flows onward to the south, into Trinity Bay, an arm of Galveston Bay that is an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico and its river mouth is near the town of Anahuac, southeast of Houston. Locks were actually built 13 miles downstream of Dallas in the early 1900s, original federal plans called for building 36 locks and dams from Trinity Bay near Houston to Dallas. The first built was Lock and Dam No.1 in the city of Dallas at McCommas Bluff, Lock construction came to a standstill in the wake of World War I, however. Only Lock and Dam Nos.1,2,4,6,7,20 and 25 were built, there are currently no plans for addressing these old locks located in various spots along the Trinity River. However, the Corps is working nearby on the Dallas Floodway Extension Project, the DFE Project is under construction and is helping to fulfill their mission, as directed by Congress in cooperation with the city of Dallas. It is helping to flood risk, and provide ecosystem restoration and recreation to the citizens of Dallas. This plan promotes a large mixed-use development adjacent to the city area of Fort Worth, with a goal to prevent urban sprawl by promoting the growth of a healthy. The Trinity River Vision lays the groundwork to enable Fort Worths central business district to double in size over the forty years. Major flooding occurred on the Trinity River in the years 1844,1866,1871, and 1890, on 26 May 1908, the Trinity River reached a depth of 52.6 feet and a width of 1.5 miles

20.
Galveston Bay
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Galveston Bay is the seventh-largest estuary in the United States, located along the upper coast of Texas. It is connected to the Gulf of Mexico and is surrounded by marshes and prairies on the mainland. The water in the bay is a mixture of sea water. The bay has played a significant role in the history of Texas, Galveston Island is home to the city of Galveston, the earliest major settlement in southeastern Texas and the states largest city toward the end of the 19th century. Today, Galveston Bay is encompassed by the Greater Houston metropolitan area, the Port of Houston, which has facilities spread across the northeastern section of the bay, is the second-busiest port in the nation by overall tonnage. Other major ports utilizing the bay include the Port of Texas City, with its diverse marine life, Galveston Bay also produces more seafood than any bay in the nation except the Chesapeake. The Gulf Coast gained its present configuration during the most recent glacial period approximately 18 ka, as the glacial period came to a close, rising sea levels initially filled this narrow canyon, followed by the broad lowlands of present-day Trinity Bay. Rapid sea level rise between 7.7 and 5.5 ka shifted the Gulf coastline northward to its contemporary latitude and this was quickly followed by the formation of Galveston Island, a barrier island, and Bolivar Peninsula, which began as a spit. Human settlement in what is now Texas began at least 10,000 years ago following migrations into the Americas from Asia during the last ice age. The first substantial settlements in the area are believed to have been the Karankawa and Atakapan tribes, louis Aury established a naval base at the harbor in 1816 to support the Mexican War of Independence. His base was appropriated by pirate Jean Lafitte, who temporarily transformed Galveston Island. Following its independence from Spain, the new nation of Mexico claimed Texas as part of its territory, settlements were established around the bay, including Galveston, Anahuac, Lynchburg, and San Jacinto. Following growing unrest, Texas revolted and gained independence in 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto, the new Republic of Texas grew rapidly and joined the United States in 1845. After the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, residents of Galveston strongly supported secession, however, at the Battle of Galveston in January 1863, a small Confederate force managed to overwhelm the Unions naval forces in the bay and retake the island. Despite this victory, the Union continued to blockade the outlets of Galveston Bay until the end of the war, reconstruction was swift in southeast Texas. Ranching interests were major economic drivers on the mainland in the 19th century, the city of Galveston became a major U. S. commercial center for shipping cotton, leather products and cattle, and other goods produced in the growing state. Railroads were built around the shore and new communities continued to emerge, commercial fishing developed as a substantial industry, particularly oysters, finfish, and later, shrimp. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 devastated the city of Galveston and heavily damaged communities around the bay, growth moved inland to Houston as fear of the risks posed by establishing businesses at Galveston limited the islands ability to compete

21.
Reservoir
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A reservoir is a storage space for fluids. These fluids may be water, hydrocarbons or gas, a reservoir usually means an enlarged natural or artificial lake, storage pond or impoundment created using a dam or lock to store water. Reservoirs can be created by controlling a stream that drains a body of water. They can also be constructed in river valleys using a dam, alternately, a reservoir can be built by excavating flat ground or constructing retaining walls and levees. Tank reservoirs store liquids or gases in storage tanks that may be elevated, at grade level, tank reservoirs for water are also called cisterns. Underground reservoirs are used to store liquids, principally either water or petroleum, a dam constructed in a valley relies on the natural topography to provide most of the basin of the reservoir. Dams are typically located at a part of a valley downstream of a natural basin. The valley sides act as walls, with the dam located at the narrowest practical point to provide strength. In many reservoir construction projects, people have to be moved and re-housed, construction of a reservoir in a valley will usually need the river to be diverted during part of the build, often through a temporary tunnel or by-pass channel. In hilly regions, reservoirs are constructed by enlarging existing lakes. Sometimes in such reservoirs the new top water level exceeds the height on one or more of the feeder streams such as at Llyn Clywedog in Mid Wales. In such cases additional side dams are required to contain the reservoir, where water is pumped or siphoned from a river of variable quality or quantity, bank-side reservoirs may be built to store the water. Such reservoirs are usually formed partly by excavation and partly by building a complete encircling bund or embankment, the water stored in such reservoirs may stay there for several months, during which time normal biological processes may substantially reduce many contaminants and almost eliminate any turbidity. The use of reservoirs also allows water abstraction to be stopped for some time. Service reservoirs store fully treated potable water close to the point of distribution, many service reservoirs are constructed as water towers, often as elevated structures on concrete pillars where the landscape is relatively flat. Other service reservoirs can be almost entirely underground, especially in hilly or mountainous country. In the United Kingdom, Thames Water has many underground reservoirs, sometimes called cisterns, built in the 1800s. A good example is the Honor Oak Reservoir in London, constructed between 1901 and 1909, when it was completed it was said to be the largest brick built underground reservoir in the world and it is still one of the largest in Europe

22.
Southwest Louisiana
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Southwest Louisiana is a five-parish area intersecting the Acadiana and Central Louisiana regions in the U. S. state of Louisiana. It is composed of the parishes, Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu. A2010 population estimate of the five parish area was over 292,619, Southwest Louisiana has one metropolitan area, Lake Charles. The southwestern portion of Louisiana also is geographically and culturally attached to Southeast Texas, intrastate regions Clickable map of Louisiana regions at the Louisiana Board of Regents, a state agency created by the 1974 Louisiana Constitution Southwest Louisiana Convention & Visitors Bureau

23.
Marsh
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A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species. Marshes can often be found at the edges of lakes and streams and they are often dominated by grasses, rushes or reeds. If woody plants are present they tend to be low-growing shrubs, Marshes provide a habitat for many species of plants, animals, and insects that have adapted to living in flooded conditions. The plants must be able to survive in wet mud with low oxygen levels, many of these plants therefore have aerenchyma, channels within the stem that allow air to move from the leaves into the rooting zone. Marsh plants also tend to have rhizomes for underground storage and reproduction, familiar examples include cattails, sedges, papyrus and sawgrass. Aquatic animals, from fish to salamanders, are able to live with a low amount of oxygen in the water. Some can obtain oxygen from the air instead, while others can live indefinitely in conditions of low oxygen, Marshes provide habitats for many kinds of invertebrates, fish, amphibians, waterfowl and aquatic mammals. Marshes have extremely high levels of production, some of the highest in the world. Marshes also improve water quality by acting as a sink to filter pollutants, Marshes are able to absorb water during periods of heavy rainfall and slowly release it into waterways and therefore reduce the magnitude of flooding. The pH in marshes tends to be neutral to alkaline, as opposed to bogs, Marshes differ depending mainly on their location and salinity. Both of these factors influence the range and scope of animal and plant life that can survive. The three main types of marsh are salt marshes, freshwater marshes, and freshwater marshes. These three can be found worldwide and each contains a different set of organisms, saltwater marshes are found around the world in mid to high latitudes, wherever there are sections of protected coastline. They are located close enough to the shoreline that the motion of the tides affects them and they flourish where the rate of sediment buildup is greater than the rate at which the land level is sinking. Salt marshes are dominated by specially adapted rooted vegetation, primarily salt-tolerant grasses, salt marshes are most commonly found in lagoons, estuaries, and on the sheltered side of shingle or sandspit. The currents there carry the fine particles around to the side of the spit. These locations allow the marshes to absorb the nutrients from the water running through them before they reach the oceans. Coastal development and urban sprawl has caused significant loss of these essential habitats, although considered a freshwater marsh, this form of marsh is affected by the ocean tides

24.
Piney Woods
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These coniferous forests are dominated by several species of pine as well as hardwoods including hickory and oak. The World Wide Fund for Nature considers the Piney Woods to be one of the critically endangered ecoregions of the United States, the United States Environmental Protection Agency defines most of this ecoregion as the South Central Plains. The Piney Woods cover a 54, 400-square-mile area of eastern Texas, northwestern Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas and it receives 40-52 inches of precipitation annually. The region has heavy to moderate rainfall, with some receiving over 60 in of rain per year. Longleaf, shortleaf and loblolly pines, along with bluejack and post oaks, a well-developed understory grows beneath the sparse canopy, and includes yaupon holly and flowering dogwood. Pine savannas consist of scattered longleaf and loblolly pines alongside black tupelos, sweetgums, other common trees in this ecoregion include eastern redbud, southern sugar maple, and American elm. American wisteria, a vine, may cover groves of trees Two varieties of wetlands are common in the Piney Woods, bayous are generally found near rivers, in bayous bald cypress, Spanish moss, and water lilies are common plants. Sloughs are shallow pools of standing water that most trees are not capable of growing in, other species, such as the purple bladderwort, a small carnivorous plant, have found niches in sloughs. Hardy species of prickly pear cactus and yucca can be both in the forests and wetlands. The indigenous Texas trailing phlox, a species, grows in the sandy soils of longleaf pine forests. Birds include sandhill cranes, black and turkey vultures, northern mockingbirds, American alligators are not as common as they once were, but their population has rebounded since the 1960s. Louisiana black bears are rare today, but still live in remote thickets, recently, there has been significant talk of reintroducing the black bear into many parts of East Texas. The most common fish is catfish, which are a native species, crayfish are common along river and creek banks. The Piney Woods Region of the four state area is an area for Bigfoot sightings. One such noted legend is the story of the Fouke Monster of Southern Arkansas, the area according to references lists this area to be the third highest in North America for these such sightings. Melanistic cougars, another probable cryptid, have been noted by residents, the majority of the commercial timber growing and wood processing in the state of Texas takes place in the Piney Woods region, which contains about 50,000 square kilometres of commercial forestland. The preserve contains ten distinct ecosystems according to the National Park Service, big Thicket National Preserve is one of two UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in Texas. The preserve has also listed as a Globally Important Bird Area by the American Bird Conservancy

25.
Paddy field
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A paddy field is a flooded parcel of arable land used for growing semiaquatic rice. Paddy cultivation should not be confused with cultivation of deep water rice, Paddy fields are the typical feature of rice farming in east, south and southeast Asia. Fields can be built into steep hillsides as terraces and adjacent to depressed or steeply sloped features such as rivers or marshes and they can require a great deal of labor and materials to create, and need large quantities of water for irrigation. Oxen and water buffalo, adapted for life in wetlands, are important working animals used extensively in paddy field farming, during the 20th century, paddy-field farming became the dominant form of growing rice. Hill tribes of Thailand still cultivate dry-soil varieties called upland rice, Paddy fields are a major source of atmospheric methane and have been estimated to contribute in the range of 50 to 100 million tonnes of the gas per annum. Studies have shown that this can be reduced while also boosting crop yield by draining the paddies to allow the soil to aerate to interrupt methane production. Studies have also shown the variability in assessment of methane emission using local, regional and global factors, the word paddy is derived from the Malay word padi, rice plant. Archaeologists generally accept that wet-field cultivation originated in China, the earliest paddy field found, dates to 4330 BC, based on carbon dating of grains of rice and soil organic matter found at the Chaodun site in Kunshan County. At Caoxieshan, a site of the Neolithic Majiabang culture, archaeologists excavated paddy fields, some archaeologists claim that Caoxieshan may date to 4000–3000 BC. There is archaeological evidence, that unhusked rice was stored for the military and for burial with the deceased, there are ten archaeologically excavated rice paddy fields in Korea. The two oldest are the Okhyun and Yaumdong sites, found in Ulsan, dating to the early Mumun pottery period, Paddy field farming goes back thousands of years in Korea. Ancient paddy fields have been unearthed in Korea by institutes such as Kyungnam University Museum of Masan. They excavated paddy field features at the Geumcheon-ni Site near Miryang, the paddy field feature was found next to a pit-house that is dated to the latter part of the Early Mumun Pottery Period. KUM has conducted excavations, that have revealed similarly dated paddy field features, at Yaeum-dong and Okhyeon, the earliest Mumun features were usually located in low-lying narrow gullies, that were naturally swampy and fed by the local stream system. Mumun Period rice farmers used all of the elements that are present in todays paddy fields, such as terracing, bunds, canals and we can grasp some paddy-field farming techniques of the Middle Mumun, from the well-preserved wooden tools excavated from archaeological rice fields at the Majeon-ni Site. However, iron tools for farming were not introduced until sometime after 200 BC. The spatial scale of paddy-fields increased, with the use of iron tools. The first paddy fields in Japan date to the Early Yayoi period, the Early Yayoi has been re-dated, and it appears that wet-field agriculture developed at about the same time as in the Korean peninsula

26.
High Island, Texas
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High Island is an Unincorporated community located in the Bolivar Peninsula census-designated place, Galveston County, Texas, United States. The community is located in the eastern part of the county on Bolivar Peninsula, less than one mile from Chambers County. As of 2000,500 people resided in High Island, the 2010 census did not record a population for High Island. The Houston Audubon Society operates four bird sanctuaries in the area, sea Rim State Park is in nearby Jefferson County, but it is inaccessible by State Highway 87, which has been closed since 1990. In 2007, Hurricane Humberto made landfall near High Island,2008 saw Hurricane Ike impact High Island with significant storm surge and winds up to 110 mph. After Hurricane Ike the United States Postal Service temporarily relocated High Island post office box services to Winnie, High Island lies on the eastern side of Galveston Bay, just inland from the Gulf of Mexico. Located on the mainland, High Islands name comes from the salt dome under the area. This salt dome raises the elevation of the area to around 38 feet, giving High Island the highest elevation of any point on the Gulf coast from Mobile, the metaphorical island has often served to protect its residents from the effects of hurricanes storm surge. The main route from Houston to High Island is to travel along Interstate 45 to Galveston, take the ferry to Port Bolivar, the High Island Independent School District serves the community. The Houston Audubon Society has 4 sanctuaries at High Island, Boy Scout Woods, Smith Oaks, Eubanks Woods, Boy Scout Woods is the headquarters, which is staffed by volunteers during peak spring migration season from mid-March to mid-May. Smith Oaks is the largest sanctuary and home to the Rookery, during this spring migration, the birds must navigate the hundreds of miles of overwater flight to find refuge and food on their journey northward. The most spectacular bird viewing is during a spring northerly storm, during these storms, the migrating birds encounter strong head winds and a prolonged and energy-draining flight over the Gulf. Every bird that comes off the Gulf near High Island is then exhausted, in such conditions, the beaches of the Bolivar Peninsula can be covered with tens of thousands of birds. With its wooded areas and more ample feeding opportunities, almost every tree, Houston Audubon - High Island U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System, High Island, Texas

27.
Salt dome
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A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when a thick bed of evaporite minerals found at depth intrudes vertically into surrounding rock strata, forming a diapir. It is important in geology because salt structures are impermeable. The formation of a salt dome begins with the deposition of salt in a marine basin. This indicates that a period of episodic flooding and evaporation of the basin must occur. Over time, the layer of salt is covered with deposited sediment, the overlying sediment will undergo compaction, causing an increase in density and therefore a decrease in buoyancy. Unlike clastics, pressure has a smaller effect on the density of salt due to its crystal structure. The ductility of salt initially allows it to deform and flow laterally. The vertical growth of these salt pillows creates pressure on the surface, causing extension. Possible forces that drive the flow of salt are differential loading on the source layer, forces that resist this flow are the mass of the roof block and the blocks inherent resistance to faulting, aka strength. If the diapir is narrow its height must be greater, eventually, over millions of years, the salt will pierce and break through the overlying sediment, first as a dome-shaped and then a mushroom-shaped - fully formed salt diapir. If the rising salt diapir breaches the surface, it can become a salt glacier. In cross section, these large domes may be anywhere from 1 to 10 kilometres across, typical structures of active diapirism are a central crestal graben flanked by flaps that rotate upward and outward. Reverse faults can separate the flaps from the overburden, normal faults create the crestal graben and propagate downward. New faults form farther outward as the dome arch becomes more intense and these structures occur beneath the surface and are not necessarily associated with the dome at the surface. Emergence of the dome will not occur unless the dome is very wide or tall relative to the overburdens thickness, if a salt dome has not pierced the surface they can found located beneath the surface in various ways. The unique surficial structures can be observed as indicating the salt dome beneath the surface, Salt domes can also be interpreted from seismic reflection where the stark density contrast between the salt and surrounding sediments outlines the salt structures. Salt domes can also be associated with springs and natural gas vents. The first salt dome was discovered in 1890 when an oil well was drilled into Spindletop Hill near Beaumont TX

28.
East Central Texas forests
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The East Central Texas forests is a small temperate broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregion almost entirely within the state of Texas, United States. The northern forests perimeter is partially within the southeast Oklahoma border, East Central Texas forests are distinguished from the adjacent Texas blackland prairies and Western Gulf coastal grasslands by their greater tree density. On the other hand, they are open and have a greater concentration of hardwoods than the forests of the Piney Woods. The climate is hot and humid, the landscapes of this ecoregion are generally more level and gently rolling compared to the more dissected and irregular topography of much of Southern Post Oak Savanna. It is underlain by mostly Eocene and Paleocene-age formations with some Cretaceous rocks to the north, the deciduous forest or woodland is composed mostly of post oak, blackjack oak, eastern redcedar, and black hickory. Prairie openings contained little bluestem and other grasses and forbs, the land cover currently has more improved pasture and less post oak woods and forest than the Southern Post Oak Savanna. Some coniferous trees occur, especially on the boundary with the Tertiary Uplands ecoregion. Loblolly pine has been planted in several areas, typical wildlife species include white-tailed deer, eastern wild turkey, northern bobwhite, eastern fox squirrel, and eastern gray squirrel. This ecoregion has more woods and forest than the adjacent prairie ecoregions, historically a post oak savanna, current land cover is a mix of post oak woods, improved pasture, and rangeland, with some invasive mesquite to the south. A thick understory of yaupon and eastern redcedar occurs in some parts, the ecoregion is underlain by Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene, and Paleocene sediments. Sand exposures within these Tertiary deposits have a distinctive sandyland flora, the endangered Houston Toad is associated with the deep sandy soils of this ecoregion This ecoregion is a narrow, 100-mile long region occurring primarily on the Eocene Cook Mountain Formation. Since the 1830s, settlement clustered along the Old San Antonio Road within this belt of prairie land. Currently, land cover is a mosaic of woodland, improved pasture, rangeland, the small, disjunct areas of this ecoregion have a blend of characteristics from the Texas blackland prairies and the East Central Texas forests. The northern two outliers, north of the Sulphur River, occur on Cretaceous sediments, while south of the river, a mosaic of forest and prairie occurred historically in this and adjacent regions. Burning was important in maintaining grassy openings, and woody invasions have taken place in the absence of fire, the tallgrass prairies included little bluestem, big bluestem, yellow indiangrass, and tall dropseed. Current land cover is mostly pasture, with some cropland and this ecoregion is an outlier of relict loblolly pine-post oak upland forest occurring on some dissected hills. It is the westernmost tract of pine in the United States. The Lost Pines are about 100 miles west of the Texas pine belt of the South Central Plains and it includes only the wider floodplains of major streams, such as the Sulphur, Trinity, Brazos, and Colorado rivers

29.
Quercus stellata
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Quercus stellata is a North American species of oak in the white oak section. Quercus stellata is a slow growing oak that lives in dry soils, and is resistant to rot, fire. Interbreeding occurs among white oaks thus many hybrid species combinations occur, Quercus stellata is native to the eastern and central United States, and found in all the coastal states from Massachusetts to Texas, and as far inland as Nebraska. It is identifiable by the cross like shape formed by the leaf lobes. Quercus stellata is a small tree, typically 10–15 meters tall and trunk 30–60 cm in diameter. The leaves have a distinctive shape, with three perpendicular terminal lobes, shaped much like a Maltese Cross. They are leathery, and tomentose beneath, the branching pattern of this tree often gives it a rugged appearance. The acorns are 1. 5–2 cm long, and are mature in their first summer, the specific epithet stellata is latin for star it is named this because the trichome hairs on the bottom of the leaves, are stellate or star shaped. There are several variants of Quercus stellata named by American botanist Charles Sprague Sargent and they are both in a section of Quercus called the white oaks. In the white oak section Quercus stellata is sister taxa with the Quercus alba, Quercus stellata is sold and distributed as white oak. One identifiable difference between the two trees is that Q. stellata is hairy on the underside of the leaf, Quercus stellata is found in southeastern America, in the coast states from Massachusetts, to Texas, and inland to Iowa. Normally found at the edge of a forest It typically grows in dry sandy areas, because of its ability to grow in dry sites, attractive crown, and strong horizontal branches it is used in urban forestry. It is resistant to decay so it is used for ties, siding, planks, construction timbers, stair risers and treads, flooring, pulp, veneer, particle boards, fuel. It is used for food for deer, turkey, squirrels, and other rodents. Quercus stellata has evolved to survive fires by having thicker bark, Quercus stellata is useful for fire surveys where the tree rings are used to get a fire history of an area. IPNI Kew Flora of North America Plants. USDA

30.
Beaumont, Texas
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Beaumont is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Texas in the United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. Beaumont was founded as a town in 1835 by Northerners, the early European-American settlement had an economy based on the development of lumber, farming, and port industries. Rice became an important commodity crop in Texas, and is now cultivated in 23 counties, a big change occurred in 1901 with the Spindletop gusher, which demonstrated the potential of the huge oil field. With Spindletop, several companies developed in Beaumont, and some continue. The area rapidly developed as one of the major petro-chemical refining areas in the country, along with Port Arthur and Orange, Beaumont forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the Texas Gulf Coast. Beaumont is home of Lamar University, a national Carnegie Doctoral Research university with 14,966 students, including undergraduates and post graduates. Over the years, several corporations have been based in this city, gSUs Edison Plaza headquarters is still the tallest building in Beaumont. In 1824 Noah and Nancy Tevis settled on the west bank of the Neches River, soon after that, a small community grew up around the farm, which was named Tevis Bluff or Neches River Settlement. They began planning a town to be out on this land. Their partnership, J. P. Pulsifer and Company, controlled the first 50 acres upon which the town was founded and this town was named Beaumont, after Jefferson Beaumont, the brother-in-law of Henry Millard. They added more property for a total of 200 acres, Beaumont became a town on 16 December 1838. Beaumonts first mayor was Alexander Calder, from the towns founding in 1835, business activities included real estate, transportation, and retail sales. Later, other businesses were formed, especially in construction and operation, new building construction, lumber sales. The Port of Beaumont became a regional shipping center. Beaumont was a center for cattle raisers and farmers in its early years. With an active riverport by the 1880s, it became an important lumber and it exported rice as a commodity crop. The Beaumont Rice Mill, founded in 1892 by Joseph Eloi Broussard, was the first commercially successful rice mill in Texas, in addition, Broussard founded a company to operate an irrigation system to support rice culture. This helped stimulate the expansion of cultivation from 1500 acres in 1892 to 400,000 acres in 23 counties by his death in 1956

31.
Port Arthur, Texas
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Port Arthur is a city in Jefferson County within the Beaumont−Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area of the U. S. state of Texas. A small portion extends into Orange County and it is ninety-one miles east of Houston. The population was 53,818 at the 2010 census, early attempts at settlements in the area had all failed. However, in 1895 Arthur Stilwell founded Port Arthur, and the town quickly grew, Port Arthur was incorporated as a city in 1898 and soon developed into a seaport. It eventually became the center of a oil refinery network. The Rainbow Bridge across the Neches River connects Port Arthur to Bridge City, Aurora was an early settlement attempt near the mouth of Taylor Bayou on Sabine Lake, about 14 miles long and 7 miles wide. It is an estuary formed by the confluence of the Neches. Through its tidal outlet 5 miles long, Sabine Pass, Sabine Lake drains some 50,000 square miles of Texas, the town was conceived in 1837, and in 1840 promoters led by Almanzon Huston were offering town lots for sale. Some were sold, but Hustons project failed to attract many settlers, the area next was known as Sparks, after John Sparks, who moved his family to the shores of Sabine Lake near the site of Aurora. The Eastern Texas Railroad, completed between Sabine Pass and Beaumont, Texas, passed four miles west of Sparks, however, the American Civil War soon began, and rail lines were removed. In 1886, a hurricane hit the coast, causing the remaining residents to dismantle their homes. By 1895, Aurora had become a ghost town, Arthur Stilwell led the resettling of the area as part of his planned city of Port Arthur. Pleasure Island now separates the city from the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, the 18. 5-mile man-made island was created between 1899 and 1908 by the Corps of Engineers to support development of the port. Arthur Stilwell founded the Port Arthur Channel and Dock Company to manage the port facilities, the port officially opened with the arrival of the British steamer Saint Oswald in 1899. When oil was discovered in the region, Port Arthur developed for a time as the center of the largest oil refinery network in the world, Port Arthur is located at 29°53′6″N 93°56′24″W east of Houston. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 143.8 square miles. The average relative humidity is 90% in the morning, and 72% in the afternoon, as of the 2000 census, there were 57,755 people,21,839 households, and 14,675 families residing in the city. The population density was 696.5 people per square mile, there were 24,713 housing units at an average density of 298.0 per square mile

32.
Orange, Texas
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Orange is a city in Orange County, Texas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 18,595 and it is the county seat of Orange County, and is the easternmost city in Texas. Located on the Sabine River at the border with Louisiana, Orange is 113 miles from Houston and is part of the Beaumont−Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area, founded in 1836, it is a deep-water port to the Gulf of Mexico. This community was originally called Green Bluff for a man named Reason Green, a short time later, in 1840, the town was renamed Madison in honor of President James Madison. To resolve the frequent post office confusion with another Texas community called Madisonville, the area experienced rapid growth in the late 19th century due to 17 sawmills within the city limits, making Orange the center of the Texas lumber industry. Oranges growth led to the arrival of immigrants in the late 19th century. In 1898, the County built a courthouse in the city, the harbor leading into the Port of Orange was dredged in 1914 to accommodate large ships. Ship building during World War I contributed to the growth in population, the Great Depression, not surprisingly, affected the city negatively, and it was not until World War II that the local economy was boosted again. A U. S. Naval Station was installed and additional housing was provided for thousands of workers and servicemen. The population increased to just over 60,000 residents, after the war, the peace-time population decreased to about 25,000. At this time, the Navy Department announced it selected Orange as one of eight locations where it would store reserve vessels, the area of the shipyards provided a favorable location, as the Sabine River furnished an abundant supply of fresh water to prevent saltwater corrosion. Also during this period the local chemical plants expanded which boosted the economy, the chemical industry continues today as a leading source of revenue to the area. The U. S. Naval Station was changed to a Reserve base in December 1975, the Port of Orange became the home to the USS Orleck, one of the few naval ships remaining that was built at the Orange shipyards during WWII. The city of Orange sustained a hit from Hurricane Rita in 2005. The city decreed that the ship be moved because, as it claimed, the Orleck was not allowed to return to the port due to politics so a new location was sought, including one in Arkansas and Lake Charles, Louisiana, for a new home. On May 6,2009, the Lake Charles city council voted in favor of an ordinance authorizing the city to enter into a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement with the USS ORLECK, on May 20,2010 the ship was moved to Lake Charles. The Grand Opening was on April 10,2011, Orange was heavily damaged by Hurricane Ike on September 13,2008. Damage was widespread and severe across Orange County, the 22-foot storm surge breached the citys levees, caused catastrophic flooding and obliterated everything in its path

33.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems

34.
Landsat 7
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Landsat 7 is the seventh satellite of the Landsat program. Launched on April 15,1999, Landsat 7s primary goal is to refresh the global archive of photos, providing up-to-date. The Landsat Program is managed and operated by the USGS, the NASA World Wind project allows 3D images from Landsat 7 and other sources to be freely navigated and viewed from any angle. The satellites companion, Earth Observing-1, trails by one minute, Landsat 7 was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. Landsat 7 was designed to last for five years, and has the capacity to collect and it is in a polar, sun-synchronous orbit, meaning it scans across the entire earths surface. With an altitude of 705 kilometers +/-5 kilometers, it takes 232 orbits, or 16 days, the satellite weighs 1973 kg, is 4.04 m long, and 2.74 m in diameter. Unlike its predecessors, Landsat 7 has a solid state memory of 378 gigabits, the main instrument on board Landsat 7 is the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus. The SLC consists of a pair of mirrors that rotate about an axis in tandem with the motion of the main ETM+ scan mirror. The purpose of the SLC is to compensate for the motion of the spacecraft so that the resulting scans are aligned parallel to each other. Without the effects of the SLC, the instrument images the Earth in a fashion, resulting in some areas that are imaged twice. The net effect is that approximately 22% of the data in a Landsat 7 scene is missing when acquired without a functional SLC, following the SLC failure, an Anomaly Response Team was assembled, consisting of representatives from the USGS, NASA, and Hughes Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The team assembled a list of possible scenarios, most of which pointed at a mechanical problem with the SLC itself. Since there is no backup SLC, a failure would indicate that the problem was permanent. However, the team was unable to rule out the possibility of an electrical failure, though such a possibility was deemed remote. This operation was successful, and on September 5,2003 and it was immediately apparent that the migration to the Side-B electrical harness had not fixed the problem with the SLC. Following this, the instrument was reconfigured again to use its primary electrical harness, the subsequent conclusion of the ART was that the SLC problem was mechanical and permanent in nature. Landsat 7 continues to acquire data in this mode, Data products are available with the missing data optionally filled in using other Landsat 7 data selected by the user. In 2013, Landsat 7 was joined by Landsat 8, the contract was part of the NASA Scientific Data Purchase which was administrated through NASAs John C. Stennis Space Center

35.
Big Thicket
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Big Thicket is the name of a heavily forested area in Southeast Texas, United States. Several attempts to provide boundaries have been made ranging from only a 10 to 15 mile section of Hardin County to an area encompassing over 29 counties, scientific studies have been performed also, but with varying results. Hal B. Parks and Victor L. Cory of the Texas Agriculture Experiment station conducted a survey of the Big Thicket region. Their study, based on geology, resulted in over 3,350,000 acres of Southeast Texas and covering 14 counties from Houston in the west to Orange in the east, claude McLeod, a botany professor at Sam Houston State University, performed a botanical based study. That study resulted in a region of over 2,000,000 acres. While no exact boundaries exist, the area much of Hardin, Liberty, Tyler, San Jacinto, and Polk Counties and is roughly bounded by the San Jacinto River, Neches River. To the north, it blends into the larger Piney Woods terrestrial ecoregion of which it is a part and it has historically been the most dense forest region in what is now Texas, though logging in the 19th and 20th centuries dramatically reduced the forest concentration. The Big Thicket has been described as one of the most biodiverse areas in the world outside of the tropics, the Big Thicket National Preserve was established in 1974 in an attempt to protect the many plant and animal species within. Senator Ralph Yarborough was its most powerful proponent in Congress and the bill was proposed by Charles Wilson and Bob Eckhardt that established the 84, Big Thicket was also designated as a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1981. As of September 30,2016, the preserve includes 112,501 acres and it consists of nine separate land units as well as six water corridors. Centered about Hardin County, Texas, the BITH extends into parts of surrounding Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Orange, Polk, the Preserves headquarters are located 8 miles north of Kountze, Texas and approximately 30 miles north of Beaumont via US 69/287. Ones fondness for the area is hard to explain and it has no commanding peak or awesome gorge, no topographical feature of distinction. – Big Thicket Legacy, University of Texas Press,1977, the terrain in the Big Thicket is flat or gently rolling. The area lies on the coastal plain of Texas, and is crossed by numerous small streams. The extent of the region was much larger than today covering more than 2 million acres in east Texas. Timber harvesting in the 19th and 20th centuries dramatically reduced the extent of the dense woodlands, prior to the acquisition of a reservation in 1854, the Alabama-Coushattas resided in the Big Thicket. The Big Thickets geographical features are believed to have their origins with the Western Interior Seaway, over time, water smoothed out the land along what is now Texass coastline. Small towns are contained within the Big Thicket, most of these towns developed in the late 19th century in support of the lumber industry, as evidenced by names like Lumberton

36.
Woodville, Texas
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Woodville is a town in Tyler County, Texas, United States. The town is intersected by three U. S. highways, U. S. Highway 69, U. S. Highway 190, the population was 2,586 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Tyler County, the town was named after George Tyler Wood, governor of Texas from 1847-1849. Woodville is located at 30°46′34″N 94°25′16″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 3.2 square miles, all of it land. The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers, according to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Woodville has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated Cfa on climate maps. As of the census of 2000, there were 2,415 people,990 households, the population density was 766.2 people per square mile. There were 1,264 housing units at a density of 401.0 per square mile. The racial makeup of the town was 65. 34% White,31. 80% African American,0. 25% Native American,0. 75% Asian,0. 08% Pacific Islander,0. 87% from other races, and 0. 91% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1. 45% of the population,37. 9% of all households were made up of individuals and 20. 6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.25 and the family size was 3.01. In the town, the population was out with 24. 6% under the age of 18,7. 5% from 18 to 24,21. 3% from 25 to 44,21. 9% from 45 to 64. The median age was 41 years, for every 100 females there were 77.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 73.4 males, the median income for a household in the town was $23,711, and the median income for a family was $31,000. Males had an income of $30,515 versus $21,125 for females. The per capita income for the town was $14,686, about 19. 7% of families and 23. 5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 38. 1% of those under age 18 and 13. 2% of those age 65 or over. Allan Shivers Library and Museum features collections related to former Governor of Texas Allan Shivers who was from the area, big Thicket National Preserve is to the south and west of town. James White, Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives from District 19, the Woodville Independent School District serves families from the community of Woodville Texas. U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System, Woodville, Texas

37.
Kountze, Texas
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Kountze is a city in Hardin County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,123 at the 2010 census and it is the county seat of Hardin County. The city is part of the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area, Kountze was originally established as a railroad town in 1881. The city was named for Herman and Augustus Kountze, financial backers of the Sabine, the seat of Hardin County, Kountze boasts an area of more than 89 percent forested lush green terrain. Local area produces over 3.5 million board feet of lumber annually, Kountze describes itself as The Big Light in The Big Thicket - a Thicket is that vast area of tangled, often impenetrable woods, streams and marshes. Now portions of this thicket are nationally protected as the Big Thicket National Preserve, the cradle of this countrys oil industry is found in the Big Thicket of east Texas. The thicket is a 50 miles circle of swampland about 30 miles north of Beaumont, in 1991 Kountze became the first American city with a Muslim mayor, an African-American named Charles Bilal. Kirby-Hill Historical Home This historical home was built in 1902 by James L. Kirby, brother of the timber baron. James daughter, Lucy Kirby Hill purchased the house from her father in 1907 and it is the first Hardin County home listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Big Thicket National Preserve was established by Congress in 1974 and this combination of virgin pine and cypress forest, hardwood forest, meadow and blackwater swamp is managed by the National Park Service. The Preserve was established to protect the remnant of its biological diversity. What is so extraordinary is not the rarity or abundance of its life forms, the City of Kountze is home to the worlds only known pair of married armadillos, Hoover and Star, married on June 10,1995. As of the 2010 census Kountze had a population of 2,123, as of the census of 2000, there were 2,115 people,747 households, and 537 families residing in the city. The population density was 532.7 people per square mile, there were 897 housing units at an average density of 225.9 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 70. 59% White,26. 43% African American,0. 66% Native American,0. 43% Asian,0. 09% Pacific Islander,0. 71% from other races, and 1. 09% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2. 84% of the population,25. 8% of all households were made up of individuals and 11. 1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.67 and the family size was 3.20. In the city, the population was out with 29. 1% under the age of 18,8. 9% from 18 to 24,28. 6% from 25 to 44,20. 7% from 45 to 64

38.
Western Gulf coastal grasslands
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The Western Gulf coastal grasslands are a subtropical grassland ecoregion of the southern United States and northeastern Mexico. It is known in Texas as Coastal Prairie and as the Tamaulipan pastizal in Mexico, specific areas include a number of barrier islands, and the resacas or natural levees of the Laguna Madre. The coast is vulnerable to storms that can seriously damage habitats. The region name. It is not an open, treeless prairie, instead. The southern third of the Texas stretch and all of the Tamaulipan portion contains shrubby areas of honey mesquite, huisache, lime prickly-ash, and Texas persimmon. This coast is rich in wildlife, and 700 species of birds, animals and reptiles have been counted here, mammals of the area include ocelot, Gulf Coast jaguarundi, southern yellow bat, Mexican spiny pocket mouse, bobcats, collared peccary and eastern cottontails. Estuaries and other wetlands are better preserved than the prairie. List of ecoregions in Mexico List of ecoregions in the United States

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Estuary
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An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a zone between river environments and maritime environments. They are subject both to marine influences—such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water—and to riverine influences—such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The inflows of sea water and fresh water provide high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea began to rise about 10. Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns, the banks of many estuaries are amongst the most heavily populated areas of the world, with about 60% of the worlds population living along estuaries and the coast. The word estuary is derived from the Latin word aestuarium meaning tidal inlet of the sea, there have been many definitions proposed to describe an estuary. However, this definition excludes a number of water bodies such as coastal lagoons. This broad definition also includes fjords, lagoons, river mouths, an estuary is a dynamic ecosystem having a connection to the open sea through which the sea water enters with the rhythm of the tides. The sea water entering the estuary is diluted by the water flowing from rivers. The pattern of dilution varies between different estuaries and depends on the volume of water, the tidal range. Drowned river valleys are known as coastal plain estuaries. In places where the sea level is rising relative to the land, sea water progressively penetrates into river valleys and this is the most common type of estuary in temperate climates. Well-studied estuaries include the Severn Estuary in the United Kingdom and the Ems Dollard along the Dutch-German border, the width-to-depth ratio of these estuaries is typically large, appearing wedge-shaped in the inner part and broadening and deepening seaward. Water depths rarely exceed 30 m, examples of this type of estuary in the U. S. are the Hudson River, Chesapeake Bay, and Delaware Bay along the Mid-Atlantic coast, and Galveston Bay and Tampa Bay along the Gulf Coast. They are relatively common in tropical and subtropical locations and these estuaries are semi-isolated from ocean waters by barrier beaches. Formation of barrier beaches partially encloses the estuary, with only narrow inlets allowing contact with the ocean waters, bar-built estuaries typically develop on gently sloping plains located along tectonically stable edges of continents and marginal sea coasts. They are extensive along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U. S. in areas with active coastal deposition of sediments, barrier beaches form in shallow water and are generally parallel to the shoreline, resulting in long, narrow estuaries

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San Jacinto River (Texas)
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The San Jacinto River runs from Lake Houston in Harris County, Texas, to Galveston Bay. In the past, it was home to the Karankawa and Akokisa tribes and it is named after Saint Hyacinth. The two forks of the San Jacinto River are known as the East and West Forks, the west fork of the San Jacinto River feeds Lake Conroe and flows south through Montgomery County to meet with the east fork in northeast Harris County to form Lake Houston. The east fork begins in San Jacinto County, north of the Sam Houston National Forest, tributaries of both forks begin within just a few miles of Lake Livingston, a reservoir on the Trinity River. The east fork flows south through Cleveland in Liberty County, Montgomery County, continuing southward, the river merges with Buffalo Bayou before the mouth at Galveston Bay. The Battle of San Jacinto was fought near the rain-swollen Buffalo Bayou in what is now Harris County during the 1836 Texas Revolution, the decisive victory gave rise to the Republic of Texas. The site is now a historic park. The park is the site of the San Jacinto Monument, which is taller than the Washington Monument, in October 1994, flooding along the San Jacinto River led to the failure of eight petroleum products pipelines, and the undermining of a number of other pipelines. The escaping products were ignited, leading to smoke inhalation and/or burn injuries of 547 people, in 2008, the EPA added the San Jacinto River waste pits to the federal Superfund cleanup list. List of rivers of Texas San Jacinto River from the Handbook of Texas Online

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Galveston, Texas
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Galveston is a coastal resort city on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U. S. state of Texas. The community of 209.3 square miles, with a population of 50,180 in 2015, is the county seat. It is within Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area, the Port of Galveston was established in 1825 by the Congress of Mexico following its independence from Spain. The city was the port for the Texas Navy during the Texas Revolution. During the 19th century, Galveston became a major U. S. commercial center and it was devastated by the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, whose effects included flooding and a storm surge. The natural disaster on the barrier island is still ranked as the deadliest in United States history. Much of Galvestons economy is centered in the tourism, health care, shipping, the 84-acre University of Texas Medical Branch campus with an enrollment of more than 2,500 students is a major economic force of the city. Galveston Island was originally inhabited by members of the Karankawa and Akokisa tribes who called the island Auia, the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca and his crew were shipwrecked on the island or nearby in November 1528, calling it Isla de Malhado. They began their trek to a Spanish settlement in Mexico City. During his charting of the Gulf Coast in 1785, the Spanish explorer José de Evia named the island Villa Gálvez or Gálveztown in honor of Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez. The islands first permanent European settlements were constructed around 1816 by the pirate Louis-Michel Aury to support Mexicos rebellion against Spain, in 1817, Aury returned from an unsuccessful raid against Spain to find Galveston occupied by the pirate Jean Lafitte. Lafitte organized Galveston into a kingdom he called Campeche, anointing himself the islands head of government. Lafitte remained in Galveston until 1821, when the United States Navy forced him, in 1825 the Congress of Mexico established the Port of Galveston and in 1830 erected a customs house. Galveston served as the capital of the Republic of Texas when in 1836 the interim president David G. Burnet relocated his government there. In 1836, the French-Canadian Michel Branamour Menard and several associates purchased 4,605 acres of land for $50,000 to found the town that would become the city of Galveston. As Anglo-Americans migrated to the city, they brought along or purchased enslaved African-Americans, some of whom worked domestically or on the waterfront, in 1839, the City of Galveston adopted a charter and was incorporated by the Congress of the Republic of Texas. The city was by then a port of entry and attracted many new residents in the 1840s and later among the flood of German immigrants to Texas. Together with ethnic Mexican residents, these tended to oppose slavery, support the Union during the Civil War

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Bolivar Peninsula
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Bolivar Peninsula is a census-designated place in Galveston County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,417 at the 2010 census, the communities of Port Bolivar, Crystal Beach, Caplen, Gilchrist, and High Island are located on Bolivar Peninsula. The peninsula was named by 1816 for Simón Bolívar, a South American political leader, jean Laffite had associations with Bolivar Peninsula. James Long based his operations here since 1819 with the first establishment of Bolivar Peninsula, samuel D. Parr was responsible for starting the settlement in 1838 that would later become Port Bolivar. The Point Bolivar Lighthouse has an important history with the peninsula and it is located on the western end of the peninsula, directly across from Fort Travis Seashore Park. Fort Travis in Bolivar Peninsula, a facility from Fort Travis in Galveston, was built with construction started in 1898. The North Jetty, extending from Bolivar Peninsula, of the entrance to Galveston Bay started being constructed in 1874, from 1896 to 1968, the Gulf and Interstate Railway connected Beaumont to Galveston Island with aid of train ferries. At one time the Bolivar Peninsula was called the breadbasket of Galveston, Crystal Beach was incorporated from 1971 until 1987, and it has been the most populated community of the Bolivar Peninsula. On April 23,1991, communities of Bolivar Peninsula received an enhanced 9-1-1 system which routes calls to proper dispatchers, the Bolivar Peninsula suffered heavy damage from Hurricane Ike that made landfall on the Texas coast on September 13,2008. The Bolivar Peninsula forms a narrow strip of land in Galveston County, Texas. Its narrowest point is a quarter of a mile and is near the community of Gilchrist. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has an area of 48.1 square miles, of which 42.5 square miles is land and 5.6 square miles. Note, Information prior to September 2008s Hurricane Ike may be different from current information. As of the census of 2000, there were 3,853 people,1,801 households, the population density was 85.3 people per square mile. There were 5,425 housing units at a density of 120.0 per square mile. The racial makeup of the CDP was 93. 69% White,0. 47% African American,0. 80% Native American,0. 57% Asian,2. 80% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 6. 96% of the population. 31. 3% of all households were made up of individuals and 12. 9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.14 and the average family size was 2.65. In the CDP, the population was out with 17. 0% under the age of 18,5. 6% from 18 to 24,20. 7% from 25 to 44,35. 1% from 45 to 64